The Lost Distillery Company

The Lost Distillery Company was established by former Diageo employees Scott Watson and Brian Woods in 2013 as a subsidiary brand of Crucial Drinks (the trading name of LDC Scotland Ltd).

The pair established a working relationship with Professor Michael Moss of Glasgow University, who led a team of archivists to make an educated guess as to the whisky character of a handful of lost distilleries.

Over the last century, nearly 100 distilleries have closed down due to financial hardship or neglect. The Kilmarnock-based company currently has permission to produce modern interpretations of whiskies from 20 closed distilleries. Each production run is small, at around 800 cases.

In 2016 the company moved premises from the Olympic Business Park in Kilmarnock to Cumnock’s Dumfries House, a 2,000-acre estate restored by the duke of Rothesay in 2007.